M11xR2 video issue

My husband and I have an Alienware M11xR2. It has worked beautifully up until the last quarter of 2010. It started to randomly power off. There was no rhyme, reason, or pattern that I could find. It wasn’t overheating or anything at all like that. I could be browsing the web, in the middle of typing a paper, or playing a video game. It wasn’t biased towards any particular action; it would just shut down whenever it felt like it. I could go for days, weeks even, with no random shutdowns but then I’d go for 2-3 days of it happening on a daily basis. It was taken care of very well. My husband is in IT and we are both geeks at heart. We have no children and desktop computers as well, so it’s not as if it was being abused.

Eventually I got frustrated with it and my husband did a fresh install of Windows. Still the same problem even with all the newest drivers and updated BIOS. We contacted Alienware’s tech support and the tech used GoToAssist and connected to the laptop, checked to make sure that I had all the latest drivers, BIOS, etc (which I did). After about an hour on the phone, he decided that I must have a defective powerboard and motherboard, so those parts were dispatched.

A few weeks after the tech came and replaced the powerboard and motherboard, I noticed that my card reader did not work at all. It didn’t even show up under the device manager. Again we called Alienware tech support and after an hour or so on the phone, the tech decided that it was another faulty motherboard and dispatched it, and also found that my hard drive was failing. The parts arrived and were installed with no problems.

A few weeks went by again, and my husband noticed that there were some lines on the screen that almost looked like dead pixels. He did a LCD hardware test and it came back with no issues. We did a fresh install of Windows and made sure the video drivers and BIOS were all up to date, and they were. So we contacted Alienware again and again spent over an hour on the phone with the tech remotely connected checking drivers, settings, etc. He decided to just send me a replacement laptop completely. It arrived Tuesday. We did a fresh install of Windows, all the newest drivers, etc.

Yesterday afternoon when I got home from work, my husband had started copying my pictures back to the Alienware from my backup drive. He set the laptop down on the dining room table and I went to change clothes and my husband went back to his office to work (he works from home for Dell). I was gone maybe a total of 10 minutes. When I came back to the laptop, there were these columns of lines across the screen again. (See pic). We are at a loss as to what to do. Any suggestions?

Thanks for your time.

 

Unfortunately I have the same problem. not sure what it is. My r2 hasn't acted any different. Once I open a program or something is goes away. Possibly a motherboard issue. it's a pain, but I would call again...which is probably what I should do. lol

 

this happends when i overclock my hp dv6 laptop, using amd gpu tool to overclock the hd4250 and this happens, when i open a game, its fine and it goes away.

 

A little while back I updated my intel drivers and had the same issue as you are showing in your picture. Do the lines go away when you open a program or other window? Check your driver version. You can try rolling back rolling back to an earlier version and see if that helps. I am using driver 8.15.10.2202 and haven't had this issue come back since I reverted to that driver.

Hope that helps.

 

Looks like bad video memory to me.

 

Thank you for responding. I'll definitely tell my husband those suggestions... He finally called Alienware and between the tech and my husband, it is working okay, for now. I've got my fingers crossed. My husband said that they updated the BIOS again. So, here's hoping that it's fixed for good.

 

Sorry, forgot to answer you in my previous reply... Yes, the lines go away if you open another program/window.

 

Same thing happens to me occasionally.... It has happened with various video drivers too. If you refresh it or like you said move around/open a program, it goes away. Quick fix but still annoying!

 

This started happening to me too, I don't when when it started - maybe after a driver update?

 

I had the same issue when Windows Update installed a "newer" Intel Driver. I uninstalled and got the latest from Intel's site and that corrected the issue. Hope that helps

 

Same exact thing on my machine. I just reverted back to the old driver and never experienced the problem since.